Episode 29: Dwarves and Game Development (1)
The plan to turn the Academy into “an insanely fun landmark,” prepared with money, power, and a dash of fantasy, fired off its first signal of success with momentum far beyond expectations.
—A wave of students pours into the Academy!
Streets near the Academy experience congestion due to massive crowds!—
—Unprecedented talents flock to the Academy!
Author Wei’s story becomes reality once again!—
—From the royal family’s problem child to a treasure everyone desires!
Author Wei changes the Academy’s fate.—
With The Moon, the newspaper of the Publishing Guild where the four-panel comic was being serialized, leading the charge, all sorts of papers began singing my praises and the Academy’s like some grand hymn.
“Good heavens! After calculating the number of new students this year, we found it has increased by over 400% compared to last year!
This is insane! I can’t even remember the last time the Academy grounds were this packed.
I suppose losing some hair was worth it!”
“The increase in new students is cause for celebration in itself.
But among them, the dramatic rise in the proportion of nobles who had been hiding away in their own territories is especially good news.
If we combine the entrance donations they paid, we should be able to cover most of the cost of this Academy renovation!”
“Thanks to this, the authority of the royal family has risen considerably as well!
It will also help the exchange of talents who will become the kingdom’s future.”
“This is all thanks to Author Wei!
Author Wei is a god! The god of Academy normalization!”
The Academy officials, as if they had all gotten high together, began overflowing with praise for me and confidence in the Academy’s bright future.
Well, the number of new students had increased by more than four times, and everywhere you looked, people were making a fuss about how the hard times were over and happiness had begun.
If it were me, I probably would have gone, “Khaa, hell yeah!” and thrown myself onto this big wave too.
People can get drunk even without alcohol sometimes, after all.
‘And even that figure of four times is only because they filtered and filtered applicants out.
If they’d tried to accept everyone who applied, it might not have been four times—it might have increased by dozens of times.’
It was a catastrophic surge so explosive that even the coins from my past life would have yelped, “Too hot!” and run away.
Rumor even had it that the shops around the Academy were breaking their daily profit records as if they had won the lottery.
The Academy was enjoying sensational popularity.
“Is this really the same Academy that was worrying about closing down because it had no incoming students?
My heart is swelling with pride.”
Considering that not only new students but also their associates and tourists were pouring in, it made sense.
“Should I say it feels like it’s become a kind of fad and social trend?
I didn’t expect things to change this fast.”
Until recently, if one had the means, hiring a private tutor to study at home had been the more rational and dignified method.
But now, that method was being treated as halfway dusty and old-fashioned.
Its image had been reversed in an instant.
Not in a year, but in just a few months!
And understandably so.
Now the Academy had a more impressive faculty, and it was better for socializing too.
‘The faculty is stacked, there are plenty of students to build connections and socialize with, and it’s even fun?
We gave you everything, and you still won’t come? That’s stubborn. Really stubborn.’
‘Most students want to attend the Academy.
So why do you not?
There is only one reason. It is because you are lazy bums who don’t want to go outside!’
That was roughly the perception.
“Well, still, the biggest reason people are gathering is…
Because the Academy looked fun, after all.”
That was why everyone was struggling tooth and nail to apply, even if they were past the appropriate age and had to enter as first-years.
“If they didn’t want it themselves, why would they go to a place where they’d have to treat kids younger than them as seniors?
It’s not the military.”
In that sense, admission to the current Academy could be called a kind of limited-edition ticket.
The opportunity and timing to enroll were limited.
And those who succeeded in enrolling were granted, along with the envy of those around them, a permanent right to tell insanely awesome stories about their Academy experience.
Who could resist that?
Anyway, with all those factors roughly mixed together.
The Academy had now succeeded in changing its image from a place no one would go even if paid, into a hot spot people couldn’t attend even if they wanted to.
It was a transformation on the level of the gloomy otaku girl in the corner of the classroom showing up after vacation as a blonde, busty gyaru.
Since I had succeeded in creating such a massive change, shouldn’t a little cut naturally fall to me, the one who played the biggest role?
From the very planning stage, we had proceeded on that premise to begin with.
And after hearing the news about the Academy, the royal family and Duke Lucid were so pumped up that they seemed ready to grant me anything I wanted.
So I confidently conveyed my request.
“I would like you to introduce scholarships and increase the number of commoner students.”
To put it simply, raise some commoner kids who have talent but are too poor to come to the Academy.
Naturally, this was not because I had suddenly developed some will for social reform.
It was to spread information about Academy life among commoners too.
If a talented commoner author wanted to write an Academy story but couldn’t because they had no experience or information about school life…
Leaving aside how unfortunate that would be, I’d have nothing to read, you know?
So I wanted to at least sow some seeds like this.
If they couldn’t go themselves, they could at least ask a neighbor.
“That is not particularly difficult. Will that be enough?”
“Yes. That will be enough.”
It wasn’t as if I was lacking anything in particular, and I had enjoyed myself plenty during the Academy renovation in my own way.
Things like the magic power measuring orb, for example.
When I actually tried it, it was pretty fun.
I understood why everyone always included it in Academy stories.
And from now on, I’d be able to farm plenty of Academy stories through Rena too.
This much was enough.
“Heh heh. You truly are a young man without much greed.
Very well. I shall invest in scholarships instead, to the extent of the profit I intended to give you.”
Since Duke Lucid promised so readily, it seemed fine to expect something from it.
If even one more fun and realistic Academy story came out because of this, I could call it my victory.
“Now then, I’ve done everything I can do for the Academy.”
Now the ball was in the Academy’s court.
Whether they could continue to fill people with dopamine and keep the Academy popular from here on was up to them.
I had handed over a few more ideas, but was I the Academy’s person in charge or its headmaster? No, I wasn’t.
“So now I should do my own work.”
What was that, you ask?
What else?
Obviously, producing a new work!
***
To be honest, this Academy renovation project had not been an easy one.
The plan and schedule had been decided abruptly, and the deadline had been rather tight too.
We had forced it through with money, power, magic, and the all-out, if-it-doesn’t-work-make-it-work spirit.
Even so, there were definitely parts that had been close to physically impossible.
Then how had we managed to finish the renovation without any problems?
“It would’ve been impossible without us dwarves!”
“Aye! With human craftsmanship, you wouldn’t even have finished half!”
“Hahaha. Of course. It’s all thanks to you dwarves working so hard.”
It was thanks precisely to these bearded dwarves, overflowing with pride.
A race of natural-born artisans possessing craftsmanship and manufacturing ability that humans could scarcely dare to match.
Because they worked several times faster than ordinary humans and helped with the renovation as well, we had been able to finish on time.
Instead of sending those dwarves away now that construction was over, I brought them along as they were in order to entrust them with another task.
These bearded friends, for all they looked like this, were people who were not easy to hire lightly.
So when a connection formed like this, I intended to reel them in immediately.
“Would you perhaps be interested in making something called a game with me?”
In order to create games through their craftsmanship, that is.
To be more precise, I intended to ask them to produce this other world’s version of a video game.
It would not be an exaggeration to call video games the essence and culmination of modern civilization.
And to reproduce such an advantageous product of civilization in another world, technicians at least on the level of dwarves would be essential.
“A game? What’s that? Is it cool? Or fun? Or is it damned big and magnificent?”
“You say it’s fun and cool?
Tsk, the name doesn’t really give me any feeling.”
“You say it’ll become a new culture? So is it cooler than a two-meter steel greatsword?”
Of course, hiring dwarves right away was not easy.
Dwarves, equipped with their race’s unique artisan spirit and stubbornness, refused to work unless it was a job that pleased them.
They even openly went around saying they would not have participated in this Academy project if it hadn’t been damned big, magnificent, and fun.
They were a bit picky, but what could I do?
If I didn’t like it, I shouldn’t commission them—that was their stance, so the side that needed them had to adapt.
So I customized my persuasion for the commission specifically for dwarves.
“If you accept my request…
I will provide you every single day, without limit, a dish called chicken, which I proudly declare to be the greatest snack in the world to pair with beer!”
“What!”
Explaining in detail here just how cool and fun games were would not be cool or sexy at all.
‘Not only would it be hard to vividly convey that feeling, but it would be difficult to understand its power before seeing it directly.’
So I changed direction and decided to strike at different conditions.
Instead of boring and pretentious talk about what games were or how much the contract fee would be.
I presented the condition dwarves most wanted to hear: unlimited refills of beer and chicken.
Naturally, I also provided tasting chicken so they could be certain.
“Damn it! Chicken, I like you!”
“It’s this crispy and delicious even by itself, but if we have beer with it too… Gulp.”
“You’re really saying you’ll let us eat this chicken and drink beer without limit while we work?!”
“Urgh, I’ll sign! I’ll sign the contract, so hurry up and bring out the beer too!”
The dwarves, who instantly fell in love with the taste of chicken and beer,
Signed the contract without asking or arguing.
I knew something like this would work better than money.
Anyway.
Since we had made the contract, I finally began explaining in detail what a video game was.
“Hmm, so you’re saying that through external controls, the contents inside this game machine connected to those controls will be made to move?”
“You probably don’t mean a simple golem or magic tool.
…It feels like I almost understand. I think we’ll only know what kind of feeling it is once we actually make it.”
“Still, it certainly does seem fairly interesting.
It also seems like it’ll be far more complicated than expected.
I understand why you’re asking us.”
And after hearing the explanation, the dwarves began showing considerable interest too.
It seemed that while listening, they got the intuition that this would not be an ordinary object.
“So. How should we make this game machine that runs this thing called a game?”
“Pardon? You all need to think about that starting now.”
“?”
However, when they heard that they had to make the game machine itself from scratch,
They all froze with a clunk, question marks appearing on their faces.
Hey, don’t look at me like that.
No, isn’t that obvious?
If I knew how to make that, why would I have hired you people?
I simply provide the ideas.
Implementing them is the dwarves’ job.
That’s what division of labor is.
I couldn’t be certain whether they could really make a game machine and games after hearing only my abstract ideas.
‘But this is a world where they made a Bluetooth shower with magic, so shouldn’t it be possible?’
I believe!
If it’s the dwarves, they can do it!
So.
Starting now, everyone roll up your sleeves and get to work!